This one's gonna hurt

Here comes blizzard #2. This time the moisture content in the snow is quite a bit higher and the snow is quite a bit heavier. It reminds me more of the 2003 blizzard, where old roofs were caving in. We've already shoveled the driveway once. Hopefully the rest of the snow that falls won't be as wet (now that it's colder outside), and the shoveling will be easier tomorrow.

If I click my heels together three times, maybe I can wish myself to the mountains. I'm very jealous of people like Annette and John who are already safely tucked away in their Summit County condo.

Let It Snow

Here's the result of some morning shoveling:

Greetings from Colorado

It may not look like it in this crappy picture, but that's a lot of snow. Driving home was fun, except there was a lot of traffic. I love how great my car drives in the snow, but it was about it it's limit with this depth of snow. It will be interesting to see what's on the ground tomorrow morning.

Well...as a newlywed, there's only one thing to do in a situation like this: Make some hot chocolate. Sickos.

Humping Dog USB toy

Here are the humping dog USB gadgets that I mentioned to some of you today:


They're plenty funny just to look at, but you really must watch the video

5 annoying email habits

I'm stealing this from another blog posting:

Five email tics I’d love for you to lose

For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these?
1. The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!” flag
2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
5. The including of my — plus 98 other strangers’ — personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

Number 2 is just funny. I wish more people would listen to numbers 4 and 5. I hate HTML email. In fact, I have told Outlook not to convert HTML email to plain text by default. There are times when sending a rich text or HTML formatted email has merits, but more often than not it's a huge waste.

Gay Soy

Look out, this conservative columnist says soy turns people gay. So now we know where gay men come from, but what about gay women? Someone better tell Japan to stop eating soy before the whole country becomes super gay. Maybe it's too late, and God is trying to smite them by unleashing tsunamis and Godzilla on them.

*edit*
Fear not. My sister-in-law, Shannon, sends me word the soy will in fact not make me gay: Eating Soy Will Not Make You Gay (We Swear)

Whew! I was really sweating. I'm going to going to go get a Soy Chai now.

Our Christmas Decorations

A while ago I posted this picture of one of our neighbors lawn decorations:


For a while this year we thought about doing something fun to their display. Some of my favorite ideas included adding things to their manger setting, like a life sized Elvis, or perhaps Chewbacca. Last weekend at another party (and copious amounts of beer) the idea was thrown about that we should create our own scene. This is what greeted our holiday party guests last night:


I must say, it was an *interesting* experience going to the adult book store to buy a blow-up doll and sheep, but I think the result was worth it. :)

Skiing and Drinking

The weekend in summary - skiing and drinking.


Saturday morning we met up with my friend Owen to go backcountry skiing. It was a nice relaxed morning. We left Owen's house around 9:30 and enjoyed a nice drive up the Poudre Canyon with little to no traffic. Even though we were driving slow (to keep my car-sick prone dog from puking) it only took us a couple hours to get up there. Any time we can make it up to Cameron Pass without Kuzca puking in the car is a good day.

It was cold when we pulled into the Zimmerman Lake parking lot, but at least there was no wind. Kuzca's paws got cold enough on the hike in that she didn't put up a fight when I put some booties on her feet. We eventually made it up to the hotdog bowl, which was filled with awesome deep powder. We were all pretty cold after the first run, and Christine decided to head back to the car with Kuzca while Owen and I did one more run. Loads of fun, despite the cool temperature.

After we got back, we went to a birthday party where we filled ourselves with fondue and beer. It was a good time and we were ready to spend the rest of our evening at the bar but we couldn't find any takers. It all worked out though, because we had a message on our machine when we got home from some friends that wanted to go backcountry skiing. So all the gear we had just finished putting away got dragged back upstairs.

Sunday morning we met up with our friends Julie, Nathan, and Bob at the bagel shop before heading up the canyon again. Kuzca was pretty tired, so we decided to leave her at home this time. Again, we decided to ski the hotdog bowl and again it was cold. We took some different lines through the bowl this time and we had a blast. Looking back up at the hill, I actually made some respectable looking turns, and Christine took her first good powder somersaults. A good time was had by all.

First stop on the way back in town: The Trailhead (a bar) to have some beer and fries and watch some football. It was a great way to finish a great weekend.

iGallop

I can't believe this thing is real:
http://www.brookstone.com/store/531707.html

Just watch the video and try not to laugh at them trying to say this is an exercise device.

And if you didn't laugh at that, I dare you to try watching this cat riding the iGallop without laughing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWZKjtFUeco

Boot Fitting

I bought new boots last year when I bought the rest of my AT gear. They've been pretty comfortable, but I felt like the fit could still be improved a bit. It turns out that Boulder is the home of one of the best boot fitters around, Larry Houchen, and I stopped by to see him over the weekend.

Larry's shop isn't any sort of ritzy affair. Aside from the wall displaying the latest ski boots, the place could only be described as "college chic". It's obvious that he's more concerned with taking care of your feet than getting decorating tips from HGTV, and I'm okay with that. When I walked in, the shop was full of activity. There were customers sprawled out everywhere and Larry directed me to have a seat and hang out on one of the couches. Even with all the commotion and activity, it's a very relaxed atmosphere. I hung out there on the couch chatting with some of the other people and listening to Larry's advice to other customers while I waited for him to come by and make some adjustments on my boots. Typically, he moves from customer to customer spending a little bit of time on each customer before moving to the next.

Having comfortable boots is priceless, but apparently nobody has told that to Larry. A couple hours (and a couple beers) later, and ended up with some better fitting boots. He re-molded my boot liners, applied some mojo to my foot beds, and who knows what else. The cost? $10. I asked him if he was kidding me. He said "Is that okay." I didn't need much in the way "parts", but his labor is easily worth more. (For crying out loud, the guy has 25+ years of experience and has fit boots for many top skiers.) I'll at least have to bring him some beer next time I'm in Boulder, and Larry's is definitely the place I'll be shopping for alpine boots.

You can call Larry for an appointment (303-402-6733), but don't be too upset if he doesn't answer the phone right away. He's busy this time of year. Very busy. Call back later. :-)

(You don't have to take my word for it. Read mobil_homme's blog post from his experience at Larry's last year.)

New Sleeping Bags

Christine and I received several REI gift cards as wedding gifts (rock!), and we put them to good use tonight. We bought some new sleeping bags:


I'm stoked because it's about 2 pounds lighter and packs down 1.5"x4" smaller than my old bag. The best part: We can zip them together to create a mutant sleeping bag of snuggly warmness:

Loveland Demo Day 2

After the demo day last weekend, we had found some skis we liked but we weren't quite sold. Fortunately there was another demo day at Loveland so we got to try out our favorite skis again, as well as some others.

The weather today was even better than last week. They had gotten some snow over the past week, and it was an uncharacteristically warm and calm day at Loveland. I started out at the Volkl booth with some AC3's for a couple runs followed by the AC2's. The AC3's are geared towards the advanced/expert skier. That's not me, which explains why I didn't like them as much as the AC2's. The AC2's felt great for me. I could have skied them all day, but I figured I should try out some other skis.

Just as last week, K2 was a disappointment as they brought a horrible selection of sizes. I've heard great things about their skis, but I guess I'll never know. I next tried a Head Monster. I had a hard time initiating turn with it. It was a little stiff, and (according to the rep) it was probably hard to flex with the AT boots I was wearing. Next it was on to Atomic to try out the "Sweet Daddy". Fun ski. It didn't behave really well when I got on some ice, but I don't care because I'm enough of a snob that I stay home when it's icy.

After a quick break for lunch we decided to take out our favorite skis for a couple more runs. My favorite was the Volkl AC2. Ironically Christine's favorite was the women's specific version of the same ski (the Volkl Attiva AC2). Christine was deciding between the Volkl's and a some Nordica's and what finally sold her on the AC2 was a short bump run. The AC2's way outperformed the Nordicas in her opinion. The only question remaining is whether to by this year's Volkl skis or save some cash and buy last year's model. It's pretty difficult to find out if anything besides the graphics has actually changed between this year and last year.

And now, a pubic service announcement about demo days:

To the vendors: Bring more than 1 size of each ski. You can't possibly expect me to like your ski if you give me something that's way too long or too short. Also, bring some womens skis in small sizes. There weren't a whole helluva lot of options for Christine to try out.

To the other demo-ers: Use a little etiquette. I know you're enjoying your time on those sweet new skis, but there are probably a lot of other people who would like to try out the same ski. Take a couple runs and return it.

Get the "e" Book (In Colorado)

If you haven't already purchased one, you should purchase The e Book coupon book (available online and at King Soopers). At only $10, this thing is a super sweet deal. Plus, the money goes to Colorado schools, so you're supporting a good cause.

• There are two buy one get one free lift ticket coupons for Loveland. Christine and I used one, and we gave the other to the Dyers this weekend. Between the 4 of us, that's $80 in savings!


• There are 4 King Soopers coupon for $5 off a $50 or more purchase (You can use 1 a quarter). So there's another $20 in savings


• There's a bunch of coupons for things that are *free* (as in beer): 2 free pay-per-view movies with Comcast, free arctic rush at DQ, free bagels at Bruegger's...


• Other ski coupons include 2 for 1 at Copper (with restrictions of course), rental discounts, $10 of Copper/Winter Park pass, and more


• Then there's a whole ton of other useful coupons

Even if you only use the grocery coupons, it's easily worth the $10. Go get this book. There, I just saved you a bunch of money. You're welcome. :)

Loveland Demo Day

I want to buy some downhill skis this year so I don't have to use my back-country gear at the resorts. Having just re-picked up skiing last year, I have no idea what I'm looking for in a ski, and frankly I don't know that I'd notice or benefit from a higher end ski. To help me solve these mysteries Christine and I went out to Loveland Ski Resort for their Demo Day yesterday.

I tried 4 different skis, doing a couple runs on each ski. Getting the right sized ski demo demo is sometimes a scramble due to the limited selection that the vendors can bring. Sometimes I had to take out a ski that was way too long, which makes for a difficult side-by-side comparison. Generally, all of the skis were pretty good. I don't think I'm a good enough skier to notice some of the finer points of the skis but I was surprised to be able to tell a difference between the feel of the different skis. In the end, I think I'd be happy with any of the skis I tried. We looked at some of the prices when we got home. Yikes. I need a prodeal. Skis are expensive. Who knew? What that? I need to buy bindings too? Oh man. On the upside, it looks like I can get by using my AT boots at least for this season.

The Bike Fit

Cyclists in Colorado are fortunate for a lot of reasons: great roads, great cycling community, great competition, great weather (70+ in November!?), etc... We're also fortunate to live close to arguably the best bike fitting facility in the world, the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, including one of the foremost experts (if not THE foremost expert) in the field, Andy Pruitt.

I've been meaning to get a bike fit for a while, but I just recently moved it up to the top of my priority list. I'm not suffering from anything really painful on the bike, but I've noticed some abnormalities that I'm afraid could turn into long term pains (like a clicking that occurs some times in my right knee, for example). My hope with the bike fit was to make the effort to prevent overuse injuries so I don't have to nurse wounds later.

Andy Pruitt is understandably high in demand, and when I originally called last week to schedule my appointment, the first available appointment was in January. Since you're reading this, you probably figured out that I didn't have to wait until January. A couple days after I made my appointment, I got a call about an opening due to a cancellation. (Note to self: It's a good idea to be very nice with the scheduling person, so that they'll call you when there's a cancellation :) )

The first thing Andy did when he came into the exam room was have me stand there while he looked me up and down and said things like “hmmm”, “uh-huh”, and “okay”. It’s a little odd to stand around in spandex and have someone checking you out, but it’s comforting to know that he’s looked at thousands of cyclists in the same way and he knows what the heck he’s looking for.

Apparently I have a really wide forefoot and a really narrow heel. No wonder it’s so damn hard to find shoes. If my shoes fit the heel, then they’re too tight for the forefoot. If they fit the forefoot, my heels slip. I also learned about the way my foot naturally lands and how that effects my cycling shoes.

After Andy was done poking at me, he sent me to get x-rays of my knees. The results showed that my knee caps are rotated slightly out. It doesn’t sound like it’s a big deal, but it helped him decide what changes he wanted to make to my shoes.

From there, it was on to the motion capture studio where we hooked up with biomechanist Todd Carver. This is where it gets pretty cool. They set my bike up on a stationary trainer and had me ride for a little while to warm up. Then they started cranking up the resistance until I was at about 70% of my maximum perceived effort level. The goal is to put your bones and muscles under normal stress levels because they move differently than if I was soft pedaling.

After I was fully warmed up, they stuck a bunch of little globes to me. Above my head and all around my bike were 6 infrared cameras that could “see” these little globes. They had me ride some more and they took both a video and a motion capture of my movements. Then they have some fun software that puts it all together and you get to see a stick figure representation of yourself pedaling. It’s really pretty cool. The software calculates your angles at various points of you pedal stroke, and they can make adjustments based on those numbers. There was also an overhead view that allowed them to see where my knees moved in relation to my feet. They could see that my right knee was moving a little more towards the inside than my left, which matches up with what Andy expected based on what he saw with my feet.

They made some adjustments to my saddle height, saddle setback, and then added some shims to my shoes to help keep my knees in the correct alignment. After a few increments of this, they put me back on the trainer and did another motion capture so they could compare the “before” and “after” numbers. Things were looking better with the changes. Over time, my body will adjust to the changes more and I should be in good shape by next race season.

What a great experience. I’ve asked my “normal” doctor in the past about things like my knee clicking, and they said not to worry about it if it didn’t hurt. I guess that’s why I avoid going to the doctor. Just because it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t mean it’s normal or healthy. I feel like the changes Andy and Todd made to my bike are going to not only help me perform better, but also keep me from getting injured. It’s not every day you get the same type of treatment as pro riders.

(They're supposed to send me a packet of data from my visit. If it looks interesting, I'll post it up here.)

2 months

We're two months into our lifetime together. So far so good. Really good.

For my colorado friends

Bicycle Colorado is trying to get a "Share the Road" license plate in the state of Colorado. If you're a resident of Colorado (and you'd like to see this plate), sign the petition.

All the pertinent information is available at Bicycle Colorado's web page.

Borat

Christine and I went out to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (also known as "Borat") on Friday night. We usually stay away from movies on opening night because of all the crowds, but I would say this was worth it. Hilarious. Go see it. I think it's really odd that it's getting such good reviews too. 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, for example. I've never watched Da Ali G Show, but I feel like I should check out the DVD's now.

Like Odwala?

$0.99 for a 6-pack of Odwala bars at Drugstore.com: http://slickdeals.net/?permadeal=8337#direct_deal_8337

Buy 31 packs for $30.69, minus $5 with a coupon, and you it's $0.14 a bar. I could maybe end world hunger with that kind of math. Seriously, maybe I should buy a bunch and donate them somewhere.

Honeymoon pictures

Finally, some pictures from our honeymoon trip. I put up an album of pictures here, but I'll post some (okay, a lot) here along with any stories that go along with them.

Hot biker mama

Here are a couple pictures of Christine from our ride yesterday.

My weekend - or How Not To Get Anything Done

I had grand visions of getting a lot of stuff done this weekend, like posting honeymoon pictures, or getting through all my mail...

Right after work on Friday, Christine and I packed up the Subie and went up to Pingree Park for some car camping. It was a little cold, but we really wanted to get one more night of camping in this year. Kuzca sure had a good time running around outside. We warmed up by the campfire in the morning as we nibbled some bagels and then took a short walk. It was quite nice.

We did most productive thing of the weekend when we got back home. Cleaning and organizing the basement has been on my list of things to do for a long time. It was nice to finally tackle that mess. We ended up with a whole carload of stuff to donate to Habitat for Humanity. As we drove over to drop it off I was happy knowing that there would be one less car load of stuff next time we move.

I figured Sunday was going to be "do crap around the house" day, but the weather had other plans for me and I ended up spending almost the whole day on two wheels. In the morning I went on a group bike ride for a few hours. I'm still regaining fitness after taking a lot of time off the bike and eating massive amounts of food in France and this ride was a good speed for me. When I got home, Christine and I went on our first motorcycle ride together. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to watch Christine get more comfortable on her new bike. By the time we got home, I had a message from a friend who recently bought a Harley Sportster. I initially turned down his plan of going for a ride, but then I decided it was way too nice to do work around the house. I rode down to Lyons to meet him and play some pinball. They've added a bunch of new pinball games because they moved their video games to another building.

I did manage to make it through some mail and bills later in the evening, so the day wasn't a total loss. :) Really...I'm going to get some stuff doing during the evenings this week.

Brief trip report

The honeymoon in France was great! I'm not sure what I can say without getting too wordy, but I'll try to keep it brief.

Our first few days were a gloomy and rainy and we were worried that it was going to carry on the whole time. We tried to make the most of it by doing things that didn't involve being outside too much. We did alright, be you better believe we were happy to see the sun come out and stay out until later in the trip.

Driving in Corsica rules! Even in our little Peugot 206 rental, I don't know if I've ever driven more fun roads. It is km upon km upon km of twisty, mountainous, narrow roads. When you get into a "city", aggressive driving is par for the course which is a-okay with me. My sometimes carsick co-driver was nice enough to indulge my crazy driving most of the time. Those Corsicans sure know how to make some fun roads. I'm going to have to rewatch the WRC Rally Corsica to see if I've been on some of those roads.

As expected, the food was tasty. I would say that our best meals were in the town o f Porto. One night we ate at a restaurant that specialized in dishes with local fish. They only serve the fish that was caught fresh that day by the local fisherman, so of course that was some tasty fresh fish. But the real high point of the meal, was the dessert. We were both trying to decide which desserts to try and then we found out that we could get a sampler platter containing all of their desserts. Holy f-ing shit. I'll post a picture of the platter later, but that was sooooooo good.

The weather wasn't super warm, but we didn't manage to spend some time on the beach. One evening we drove out to the Plage d'Arone to enjoy the beach at sunset. I had forgotten to bring my sandals with me, so I took a lot of pictures while Christine got her feet wet. The beach was beautiful and it was awesome to be there at sunset. We also went to some beaches around Bonifacio in southern Corsica. There's a funny story there that'll I'll have to save for another posting, but it involves a "naturaliste" beach.

Things didn't go too smoothly once we got back to the mainland. We had trouble getting our rental car, which caused us to change our plans a bit. We drove up to the Alps with the hopes of riding up l'Alpe d'Huez (a famous Tour de France mountain pass), but all the bike shops were closed. That area sort of shuts down in October while they take a break between summer tourists and winter tourists. Total bummer, but the area was beautiful. The Alps are amazing; way more dramatic than the Rockies. We'll have to go back there someday and spend some time riding.

We flew from Nice to London to Detroit, where we were stopping for a hometown wedding reception and my 10 year high school reunion. The reception went well. Thanks to my family for putting that together. It was nice to see some family friends as well as some of my high school friends prior to the reunion. The reunion was fun also. I didn't talk to all that many people, but I feel like I got to talk with the people I really cared to talk to. As if it wasn't hard enough to deal with the jet-lag, we were keeping a strange schedule. On Friday night, I think we were out until 1AM and on the night of the reunion we didn't get to bed until sometime after 4AM. I managed to sleep from 10PM until 6:30AM today, so I think I'm finally adjusted.

The trip back to the Detroit airport from Toledo didn't go quite according to plan. We left Toledo with enough to get us to the airport 1.5 hours before the flight, which seemed like plenty of time. We didn't figure in construction. Who does construction on Sunday? Apparently Michigan-DOT. They weren't doing anything major (nothing that couldn't have been done over night like they do in Colorado), but they took 3 lanes of traffic into 1 causing a huge backup. I thought we were pretty much screwed, and I figured we'd be spending the night in Detroit while we waited to fly standby the next day. That didn't make us too excited, because as you can imagine we really wanted to get home after 2 weeks away. We somehow ended up getting to the airport with 2 minutes to spare before the 30 minute cutoff. I couldn't believe it.

I'll post some pictures as soon as I finish going culling, tagging, and renaming all 800+ of them.

Hello jetlag

So much for sleeping in today.

haute ville

We've made a full circle of the island and we're back in Bastia for 1 night before heading back to the mainland. We ended up having some great sun and great food! There will be many photos later.

Au revoir!

We're here

We're on Corsica (in Corte to be exact). If it wasn't raining so much, we probably wouldn't have stopped in a cyber cafe to check email. Oh well, the food is good. :)

New bike

Another one of those pesky motorcycles followed me home today and parked itself in my garage.



Fortunately we can keep it because it's a Christine-sized Kawasaki Ninja 250


She looks a little more comfortable on that than she did on my bike


I had been looking around for a smaller bike lately because I knew Christine wanted to be able to ride, but my bike was too big for her to feel confident riding. I found this used 2004 with only 2400 miles on it and it seemed like the right bike for her. I drove it up from Denver at lunch and parked it in the garage for her to find when she got home. I think she likes it. :)

iStockphoto

Why is it that all new technologies have to have an "i" in front of their name? *shakes fist at Apple*

But I digress...

I saw this website today and thought of the great photos people post on LJ. iStockphoto is a place where people can upload their photos and other people can buy them as "stock" photos. The photographer gets 20%, which isn't that much but if you don't mind people using your photos, it's like free money.

I saw the site listed in a Business Week article about "crowdsourcing". Apparently that's the new buzzword for companies going to consumer generated content for their ideas.

Wedding photo albums

I'm trying two photo albums: Picasa, and the Web Album Generator. Picasa's web albums are cool, but they're space limited until you pay. The Web Album Generator is plain, but simple and free. Free is good. Let me know if one album is significantly better/more useful than the other.
Picasa:
Wedding Ceremony
Wedding Picnic and Hike
Wedding Reception

Web Album Generator:
http://www.bikeandclimb.com/temp_wedding_album/

Web Photo Albums

I'm looking for a utility to create a web ready photo album of a bunch of pictures. I just want to feed it a bunch of pictures and have it create thumbnails and web pages for easy navigation. I see the Livia has used Web Album Generator, but I'm curious to know if anyone has tried other ones. Ideally, it would be great if my image viewer (usually ACDSee) would do this for me. Maybe it already does and I don't realize it. I honestly haven't messed with too many photo album programs on my computer.

The goal here is to put up our wedding photos quickly for our friends and family to view. Eventually we'll sort through them and add titles and comments before reposting the pictures.

Whew!

It's finally over. With a little (okay a lot) of help from our friends, the big day is history, and it went off in spectacular fashion.

Things were a little worrisome at the rehearsal Friday when it seemed to rain the whole time at the wedding site. We were asked several times "What do you plan to do if it rains?" Our answer: "Get wet". We really wanted to get married outside and if it was going to rain, we were fully prepared to get wet. There's no plan B.

The weather looked like a tossup on Saturday morning. It was gray out, but there were breaks in the clouds, so I was hopeful. By the time we stopped in Lyons for gas, there was even some sunshine and I thought to myself "hey, this might just work out." I really enjoyed the drive through Lefthand Canyon up to the Colorado Mountain Ranch. It was a nice crisp morning, and I swear the trees had turned more yellow overnight. Since Kuzca was riding with me, I drove a little more conservatively and enjoyed the sites.

The pre-wedding activities at the ranch are kind of a blur. The arch was decorated, assembled, and moved into place. Nat set up his cello and started rocking out. My brother directed parking. Christine and I changed into our wedding clothes. I had seen Christine in her wedding dress a while ago, but she looked even more amazing in it on our wedding day with her halo of flowers. Even my dog got in on the action with a collar of flowers that matched Christine.

Just in time for the ceremony, the clouds broke and the sun shined brightly. It was amazing. As I stood at the front of the amphitheater I had to squint as I looked out on the crowd of our friends and family. Even with all the people, when Christine's father put her hands in mine I felt like there was nobody else around. It was great to stand up there with her while our officiant read the ceremony we put together, all the while cracking jokes to each other. Before I knew it, the deal was done and I was signing paperwork. There's no turning back now. I'm married.

We stuck around to clean up our mess a bit and it started to rain again just as I left to drive down to the Chautauqua hike. The clouds also started to roll in, and the road down Sunshine Canyon was thick with fog. It put a damper on what I had hoped was going to be "spirited" drive down in the R32, but not as much of a damper as a slow driver a little further down the hill. I was stuck behind a line of a half dozen cars going extremely slow. Unacceptable on such a fun road. When we got to the pavement there was a short straight section and I passed everyone. It was smooth sailing from there on, and I had fun cruising down to Boulder.

The rain kept up at the park and we all huddled under the porch at the ranger station while we waited for lunch to arrive. Lunch consisted of sandwiches (from Tastebuds in Fort Collins), IZZE sparkling fruit juice, and some homemade cookies from Christine's mom. By the time lunch arrived, the rain was just about finished and we were able to enjoy our tasty lunch in the sun before heading off for a hike in the park. I've never hiked at Chautauqua, and it was fun to do a hike at the base of the Flatirons.

Later in the evening we arrived at the Rembrandt Yard to help coordinate table setup and decoration. We helped a little, but really the bulk of the work was done by friends and family. It was really great to have that help so Christine and I could head off for a quick bite at Leaf (which, by the way was delicious). The rest of the evening went by rather quickly. There were dance lessons. We had our first dance. We danced with our mom and dad. We ate good food. We had some cake. It was all quite fun, but it was over before I knew it. I only had two drinks the entire night because I was trying to chat with people.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, and I hope they did. We sure enjoyed seeing everyone and throwing a fun party.

The whole day couldn't have been a success without the help of a lot of people. Here are a few:
Jamie - Thank you for being our photographer. I've only just started to go through all the great photos.
John and Annette - Thank you for entertaining the guests with some great music and introducing some of them to swing dancing.
Nat - Your cello playing was outstanding.
Adam - Directing traffic and handling the dog aren't normal best man duties. Thanks for handling the odd jobs.
Christine's bridesmaids and friends - Thank you for help out with a the little details and helping keep Christine calm(ish)
Our families - Thank you for your help leading up the big day and beyond.
Shannon - I don't know what we would have done without your help. Your help in a countless number of details was priceless.

And of course my beautiful and amazing bride Christine - Clearly you did the lion's share of the planning, and you did an amazing job. Thank you for choosing to spend the rest of your life with me. I win! You mean the world to me and I can't wait to grow old with you (as long as we don't have to grow up too).

Race season is over

My last race of the year was last weekend in Grand Junction. The short story - I got dropped early. It was an 85 mile course with a lot of climbing and I just haven't been feeling that well lately. I finished 20th out of a field of probably about 30. Not my most stellar performance, but I was glad to have done it.

Accidental proximity

One of my cycling teammates and I were uncomfortably close to an accident over the weekend. Not once, but twice.

Shut up Jessica Simpson

Jessica Simpson ordered to rest voice

So all it takes is a doctor to shut her up. I like this quote from the story:

"She can talk, she can croak out a few sentences. She sounds a little off, but, you know, she can't sing."

Debt Reduction

Christine and I just cut our debt in half today. We sold one of these:


*breathes sigh of relief*

Wheels

My favorite bike shop loaned me some $2500 Bontrager XXX Lite carbon wheels. What were they thinking. *grin*




For the weight weenies (John), they're 1350g, which is about 400g lighter than my current Race Lite's. Next I'm hoping to try the Rolf Vigors which are still light (1470g), but a little more aero.

Of course, it's a rainy weekend, which makes for poor wheel testing conditions.

While that may look like a pretty boring picture, take a close look. Those are puddles forming in my yard from rain. It never rains hard or long enough for puddles to form around here. I was amazed.

The contract

After several months on the market, Christine's condo finally has a contract! I suppose it could still fall through, so keep your fingers crossed. It looks like we're even going to be a be able to close before our wedding if everything goes well. That means we won't have to pay 2 mortgages next month. Oh hell yeah!

Ahhh....oxygen

I finally made it back to retail sales. My life goal. :)

Over the weekend, I was working at a retail store to help answer customer questions and sell them on our stellar products. Working retail and playing salesman is not my favorite thing to do, but it was interesting to see what customers are looking for. Not to mention, I scored a trip home (Toledo, Ohio) on the company's bill to do it.

While in Toledo, I was able to borrow a bike from a high school and ride in a bike race on Thursday. Oxygen is good. :) Since it's a small weekly race, all categories of riders start together. That means I, as a cat 4, was racing with cat 3's and 2's. In other words, my goal was to try and hang on with the leaders as long as possible, and then get in with the first chase group when I got dropped.

It was a 28 mile race on an 'L' shaped 7 mile course with 6 corners. I started the race at the front with my friend, Phil, and shuffled through the pack for the rest of the race. Sometimes on the front. More time on the back. The corners is where I really suffered because I'm not very aggressive around corners in a big group, and even less aggressive on an unfamiliar bike.

As we neared the finish, I could tell that I wasn't going to have to legs to really contend the sprint, so I drifted to the back to stay out of trouble. Bunch sprints are scary. I ended up finishing with the lead pack, which is a great result for me, considering I was racing people that were well above my skill level. Phil led a blistering pace for the last mile and his brother was able to sprint it out for the win.


Phil and I hanging out before the race.


Joe and Phil

I'm an adult

I have reached a level of maturity that I thought I'd never see:
I have now successfully made it through a whole tube of lip balm instead of losing it halfway through its life. I'm going to have to balance this maturity by calling someone a poopie-head.

Clerks 2

Go see Clerks II. We saw it last night, and laughed our butts off.

Pollution Scorecard

Here's a neat site that will give you information about pollution in your area:
http://www.scorecard.org/
Quick links for: Fort Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Toledo

Today's ride

With Christine stuck in New Hampshire for the weekend, I figured it would be a time to get our for a long ride. I set out at 7:30 this morning to do a loop around Carter Lake followed by a trip up Buckhorn Canyon and Rist Canyon.

What a killer day. The route was: Fort Collins->Loveland->Carter Lake->Eden Valley->Masonville->Buckhorn->Rist->Fort Collins. My plan to refill water bottles in Masonville was foiled since the store wasn't open for another couple hours. Since I was already just about out of water at that point the only real option was to ride up to Horsetooth Mountain Park, which was 3 miles uphill and in the opposite direction that I wanted to go. Ugh, but it was worth it for the water.

Buckhorn Canyon is a killer. I haven't ridden it in the south to north direction yet this year and I had forgotten how steep some of those pitches are. I did alright for a while, but then I hit the proverbial wall. The climb up to the top of Rist Canyon was sloooow and hard. I was really glad for the long descent into Bellvue. :)

87 miles, 6400 feet of climbing

Here's a map of the ride:


And the elevation profile (in black):

Wind River Backpacking

Nat, Christine, Kuzca, and I took a 4 days last weekend and backpacked in the Wind River Range of Wyoming.

After a late start on Thursday evening, we drove almost halfway to our destination and stopped in Rawlins for the evening. Surprisingly, we found that just about every hotel was full. Apparently it's a popular place to stop along I-80 in the summer, even on a Thursday. We eventually found a room and crashed for the evening at some sketchy motel.

Christine and I went out for breakfast the next morning, and I had what could be the worst scrambled eggs ever. I don't know what they put in these things but it was bad. We rousted Nat shortly thereafter and ran away as quickly as possible from that horrible eating experience.

After a stop in Pinedale for supplies and lunch, we made it up to the trailhead and started our journey. It was a 6 mile hike from the trailhead to our destination (Glimpse Lake), and it was almost entirely uphill. Packed full with a few days of food, our backpacks were a little heavy and it was a grind to get to the lake. I think what kept us going was knowing that we'd be setting up a base camp and wouldn't be carrying our big packs again until our hike out on Monday.

Kuzca was cute on the hike in. She likes to stop and wait for us to make sure we're still there and sometimes she'll even start going back down the trail to find someone. She has also figured out that a good place to stop and wait is in the shade.

We're fortunate here in Colorado to rarely have to deal with mosquitoes when we go hiking. With all the water around the Wind Rivers (there are a ton of lakes in the area), however, there was plenty of breeding ground for mosquitoes. It was a nuisance all weekend but we put on bug spray and dealt with it. After the tiring hike in and battling with bugs, we were all pretty beat. We cooked up a simple meal of mac and cheese and then retreated to our tents for the evening.

I was the first one up the next morning so I did a little fishing and caught a nice brook trout. Following breakfast, we hiked up above the lake to the "crow's nest" for a spectacular view. From there we eyed some possible hiking routes for the following day and then we headed on our 6 mile day hike to Trapper Lake. Trapper lake was nice, but, as the guide book described, it was lacking solitude. It's a popular lake for people to take pack-stock trips into, so we saw people hanging out with big coolers and other items you wouldn't dream of backpacking with. Before heading back to camp, we found a nice place to eat lunch and even take a little swim.

Being sore and tired the following morning, we bagged our ambitious plans to hike to another lake. Instead, we hiked around our camp's lake and did some more swimming. Even Kuzca got in on the action this time. She really doesn't like the water, but she may have had a little help falling into the water. We spent the rest of the day lounging around camp, doing a crossword, and planning a honeymoon.

All good things must come to an end, and on Monday morning we had to pack up and head out. It was a quicker hike than on the way in, but it was still strenuous. We were all very glad to see the car.


Nat starting out on the trail:


Kuzca really knows how to get comfortable. Here she is using a rock as a pillow:


And here she is lounging by the lake:


Christine with a freshly picked wild flower:


Christine and Kuzca frolicking in the flowers:


One last view on our way to the car:


And from what Nat calls me "Trees of Wyoming" collection:

Tour de France

Wow.

I understand that the vast majority of people don't pay much attention to pro cycling, but thanks to people like Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond, Americans are pretty familiar with the biggest race on the cycling calendar. And since I don't expect that most of my friends are following le Tour, here's an update:

So far this has been a very exciting race. With that Lance guy retired and the 2 pre-race favorites booted due to doping suspicions, the competition was a real tossup. It took until the Alps before American Floyd Landis emerged as the clear favorite for the win.

What has happened the last couple days is nothing short of amazing. Floyd Landis had a bad day yesterday. On the final climb of the day, people started to attack and Floyd just couldn't hang. He bonked. Big time. By the end of the day, Landis had gone from 1st to 11th place, 8:06 away from the lead. The chances of another American spoiling France's parade by winning their race were looking slim.

What a difference a day makes. Floyd attacked on the first climb of the today's stage and managed to win the stage by riding alone the for 80 miles. Not only did he get a stage win, he catapulted himself up to 3rd place, and is now within striking distance of taking the win once again. Let me repeat that again. This morning he was 8:06 out of first place. Tonight he's 0:31 out of first place. That's un-f'ing believable. That's historic. That's the sign of a true champion. I haven't been much of a Landis supporter (I think it's the porn star mustache he was sporting earlier this year), but I'm a convert. The race is far from over, but Landis is an excellent time trialer and he could easily take back 30 seconds on Saturday's TT. I can't wait to watch it.


And that's why this could be the best Tour de France ever (even better than LeMond's 8 second win over Laurent Fignon in '89).

Best place to live

Money Magazine just rated Fort Collins as the number one best place to live (for small cities). Colorado Springs is number 1 for big cities.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/index.html

New Phone

I got a new phone last month. My old one still worked reasonably well and I liked it but I saw the opportunity to combine some of my devices. My new phone (the Motorola SLVR L7) can play MP3's (and comes with iTunes built in). Instead of carrying my phone and MP3 player when I ride, I can now carry just my phone (which isn't much bigger than my old phone alone). Ideally, I was hoping to listen to my tunes over bluetooth with some Oakley RAZRWIRE sunglasses. They have a built bluetooth earpiece. As of yet, however, the phone doesn't have the correct bluetooth profile needed (A2DP) to stream music over Bluetooth. Why Motorola would make a multimedia phone without this profile is beyond me. I'm hoping the phone hacking wizards will be able to put something together.

My new phone also takes me into the realm of text messaging. For all the people who've sent text messages to me and been ignored (my old phone didn't have good support for it), now I can get your messages. There's a good chance I'll still choose to ignore you, but that's another issue entirely.

I'm not a huge fan of text messaging, but there's at least one really good use: Google SMS. Suppose you need the phone number for Big City Burrito in Fort Collins. Just send the message "Big City Burrito Fort Collins CO" to "GOOGL" and it will come back to you with the information you need almost instantly. It's really cool. The Google SMS web page has some more examples of things you can do.

And while I'm talking about text messaging, let me take this opportunity to call out liv_e_uh on her SMS addiction. Even though she knew I was driving at the time, she still texted me. Maybe she just wants me drive off the road into an abutment. :P

Pleasant Suprise

On my ride yesterday I hopped off the bike path I was on and rode up to a road. I was greeted by an empty road with new pavement. The road was blocked off for all but local traffic so I pretty much had use of free use of an empty road to do some interval trainnig. Awesome.

All carb'ed up and nowhere to go

Tragedy struck Friday when Christine found out that her Triple Bypass partner wouldn't be able to ride this weekend due to a bike crash injury. It would really stink for her to have to ride the whole things alone, so we worked out a plan where I could ride the last half with her and have someone take us back to our car afterwards. Riding only half would allow me to help Christine get on the road without worrying about my own stuff, and then provide a midway refueling point with some tasty treats not available at the aid stations and dry clothes.

Most everything was packed into the car on Friday night so we could get an early start on Saturday, and we ended up getting her on the road shortly after 7. We must be in the middle of rainy season in Colorado or something, because it's been raining (or threatening to rain) all week, and today was no exception. Shortly after Christine started up Squaw pass, it started raining hard and by the time she got to the top she was soaked. Waiting in Idaho Springs, I got to see all the people coming down off the pass shivering uncontrollably as they hopped off their bikes for some coffee. I would guess that no more than 25% of the people actually continued on. Looking to the west, it just didn't look like the weather was going to break and there were reports of snow on top of Loveland Pass. Christine called me from the Echo Lake Lodge (partway down the pass) so I could pick her up and thaw her out.

It was a bummer that the ride got cut short, but it was the right way to go. Driving back over Squaw Pass the visibility was very low with fog and a lot of rain. Several people working the event said it was the worst weather they'd ever had. I guess that's the chance you take in Colorado. Even in July.

Triple Bypass

Christine will be riding in the Triple Bypass this weekend. For those not in the know, it's a 120 mile ride that goes over 3 mountain passes and covers over 10,000 feet of climbing. I'm a slacker this year, but that means I get to drive around and be her personal support car. Support includes tire changing, cold beverage storage, MP3 player recharging, massages, etc. If anyone is going to be in Summit country and wants to cheer her on, give me a call and I'll tell you where to find us.

Shelf Road

Instead of spending the weekend on a bike, this time we spent it climbing at Shelf Road.

Livia was nice enough to let us stay at her place on Friday, Kuzca included. It's difficult to find a place to stay that won't mind a 70 pound furry monster. Thank you Livia for tolerating us. It saved us from having to get up super early on Saturday and it also gave us our first opportunity to meet Ti-Fou. I'm pro.

As we were grabbing a few items out of the car at Livia's, we came to a terrible realization. We had packed up our gear in plastic bins, and the bin that contained our tent was still sitting on the basement floor. Whoops! It's great to have friends with gear, because within a few minutes we got in touch with John B and he had an extra tent to bring.

Saturday morning we drove out to Shelf road and started with a 5.8 climb. This was only my second time climbing this season and the first time outdoors. It felt awkward, but it was fun to be out on the rock. Nearby, Ti-Fou and another Canadian climber celebrated Canada Day by double-teaming the lead on a 5.11. Once the toprope was set up on the 5.11, Christine flexed her muscles and scurried up it. It was awesome. Later we moved to a different spot and climbed a fun 5.9 overhang. The beginning was the tough part of the climb, and once again Christine kicked its butt. Once she showed me how it was done, I had a go at it too and managed to make it to the top.

Since we were car camping, Christine and I tried to think of something ridiculous to bring that we would never take on our normal camping trips. The winner: Croquet. Christine had a Croquet set, and it turned out to be a big hit. Even though it rained for a few hours after we got done climbing, we still had a lot of fun drinking, playing croquet, and just screwing around in general.

After a lazy start on Sunday we hiked down to a different wall. This time Christine and I only got one route in before some bad weather came in. It was a 5.8 with some really fun layback moves along a crack.

One long ride home in holiday traffic followed by some unpacking and a doggie bath and we were ready for bed. It was a great way the spend the beginning of the long weekend.

Christine climbing the 5.11


Ti-Fou working hard.


A look at Shelf Road. Dad - this may look familiar. It's the road between Cripple Creek and Canon City that we drove a long time ago I think. You should dig out those pictures.


Kuzca kicking back (and keepin dry) in Livia's Element with some box wine and a cigar.



Livia and John - croquet pros

An Inconvenient Truth

HP has been sponsoring screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth" around the country, I guess to demonstrate their commitment to the environment. Last weekend they had ascreening for employees in Fort Collins and Christine and I scored a couple tickets.

Apparently, Al Gore has had some free time since '01 and has been traveling around the world giving presentations about global warming. Basically, the movie is his presentation (or parts of it) interspersed with some other clips and voiceovers.

I'm certainly not a climatologist or environmental expert so I can't vouch for the science used, but I found the information interesting and compelling. Well, as compelling as Al Gore can be. I intend to search online for the global warming skeptics' viewpoint, but even if everything in the movie is somehow false I don't see how anyone could argue against doing simple things to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

I hope a lot of people see the movie and give some thought to the impact they have on the world. I know a lot of people are turned off by Al Gore, but hopefully they can look beyond the presenter and understand the message. Yes, the movie is a bit self-serving at times. Yes, he takes a couple jabs at Bush. Yes, Al Gore's hair is disappearing faster than the polar ice caps. Get over it and see the movie.

Emeril

There are some shows on the Food Network that I like, and then there's the ones that just make me laugh. Emeril Live falls in the latter category. The guy get's an applause break for *everything*. "Kick it up a notch" - Applause break. Add some "gah-lic" to something - Applause break. Do anything with alcohol (just mentioning alcohol is adequate) - Applause break. If you played a drinking game where you took a shot for every applause break, you'd have alcohol poisoning before the show is half over. The audience must leave that show with swollen, bruised hands from all the clapping.

Dupont, WA

We've been debugging an issue at work for the past couple weeks and yesterday we got to the point where we can't make more progress without getting our supplier involved. I somehow drew the short straw, and I hopped on a 6:30 flight to Seattle this morning. Yes, 6:30AM. I got up at 4AM for work. Yawn. If I can stay awake, maybe I can update my LJ.

Dead Dog Stage Race

Another weekend, another race. This time it was the Dead Dog Stage Race in Laramie , Wyoming.

The race almost got canceled due to a wildfire in the area, but instead of canceling it they decide to change the road race a bit. I commend them on their ability to make things happen, but my race category really got the short end of the stick. Normally there is some serious climbing in this race, but they the modified route caused all of the significant climbing to be removed. I rode in the lead group fairly easily most of the time. On one of the rolling hills I got gapped off behind some slower people and had to chase really hard to get back into the main field. That took a lot out of me. About 15 miles from the finish we hit another roller, and I ran out of gas. It's so frustrating to see everyone pulling away from you. I worked with a couple other people, and we lost about 5 minutes on the leaders by the time we finished.

There were two stages on Sunday: a criterium and a time trial. My criterium start time was bright and early at 7:40AM so I had to leave my house a 5:30 in order to get there in time to warm up. Ugh! I didn't get a chance to preride the course beforehand, so I was pretty cautious at the start. Before I knew it, the whole peloton was stretched out in a line and that line eventually broke. From that point on, I sat in with the chase group and tried not to do too much work so I would still have some energy at the time trial.

The time trial was a 10 mile effort along a breezy, rolling frontage road. The short story is that I flatted on the way to the turnaround point. I didn't realize that I had flatted and when I fully committed to the 180 degree turnaround, my wheel came out from under me and I crashed. There was no wheel support on the TT, so I was kind of stuck 5 miles from the finish line. Eventually borrowed a wheel from a volunteer. I rode the final 5 miles with a borrowed wheel, and I carried my flat one in one hand. It was an interesting ride back.

It was a pretty crappy weekend of racing for me. This is really a race where I should have been able to do well. I'm annoyed that I got dropped on the road race. I'm annoyed that I wasn't aggressive at the start of the crit. And I'm annoyed that I pretty much took myself out of the race with a flat in a TT. I'll look forward to doing better next year. :)

The Hugo Report

Saturday was my first big road race of the year - The Hugo Road Race. As far as courses go, it's not the most exciting, but it's one of the few long road races of the season (62 miles). Hugo is located about an hour and a half east of Denver, which means the race is hot, windy, and relatively flat.

Last year I didn't even pre-register for the race, so I figured I would be fine to register the week before the race this time. Apparently there are more cat 4 racers in Colorado now, and the field was full by Tuesday afternoon. I was bummed because I was going to have to race in the "overflow" group instead of with the main field. But it turned out to be pretty fun, because I find it much more enjoyable to ride in a pack of 30 than a pack of 100.

As expected for a road race, the pace was pleasantly slow for a while. The course is flat to downhill for the first 20 miles, so it seemed like people we waiting until we got to the rolling hills before making their move. Well, just as we about to get to those first hills, we had to stop on the road. There was a really bad crash in a group that was in front of us and there were emergency vehicles blocking the road. It was really strange to stop in the middle of a race and get off the bike, but it really worked to my advantage. As we were standing there, I noticed that my front tire was a little squishy. I had just enough time to replace my tube and get the tire back on the bike before we were riding again. What luck!

I tried to make a move on one of the hills just to mix things up a bit and see if a few of us could create a gap. That didn't work out so well. What would happen is that the group would get strung out but nobody was willing to get to the front and help keep the speed up. There was a feed zone at about the halfway point of the race and someone put in a good attack. It's not against the rules to attack in a feed zone or anything, but I consider it pretty bad form. People are busy reaching for a new bottle, so it's difficult to respond to the attack. I decided it wasn't really worth chasing, so I sat in the draft as other people took up the lead. Another person countered to bridge up to the first attacker. The first person eventually petered out, and the second went on ahead of him. It was very frustrating because this group was terrible at riding an efficient paceline, so I just kept watching the race leader get further and further away until he was out of sight. Of course, it didn't help our cause any that he was getting a sweet draft from the lead vehicle while the rest of us were riding into a headwind.

There were several small attacks throughout the rest of the race, but they were all pretty easily covered. As we neared the end of the race, my leg muscles started cramping up. I really need to figure out what's causing that, but it makes it extremely difficult to pedal. I couldn't really contest for the sprint because I couldn't get out of the saddle, but I did manage to pass a couple people who popped on the way to the line. I ended up in 6th place, which is a pretty good finish for me, and I had a lot of fun.

Picture from crit

Here's a picture from the crit last weekend:


You can tell my level of confidence in crit racing by the fact that I'm wearing my plain black shorts instead of our team shorts. If I go down and tear up my team shorts, I can't order more until next season. :)

Life at the back of the pack

I did my first crit of the year today. In fact, it's probably been at least a year since my last crit.

I don't like crits. It's a lot of riders navigating a tight course at high speeds, so of course crashes are likely. And I can personally attest to that, having lost skin on two occasions last year in crits.

My goal for this crit was to finish safely with the main field, and I'm happy to say I accomplished that. I was at the tail end of the main field for most of the race because my "crit confidence leve" wasn't high enough for me to try and mix it up with the big crowds. :) Maybe next time. I can tell my fitness and bike handling skills are much better than last year.

Next weekend is a 60 mile road race.

20 minutes

I rode in to work this morning and I finally made the 6.7 mile ride in less than 20 minutes. It was relatively cool this morning, and I was just hitting all the lights right. A construction worker even stopped up traffic in a 1-lane section so I could pass through without stopping. Average speed was 21 mph.

Early in the season I decided it would be a good idea for me to get down to 140 lbs to help improve my climbing. About the time I finished up my weight training for the season I had hit 140 which I kind of figured is where I'd stay. I weighed myself this morning (on the same scale) after my ride in to work and I'm down to 132 now. Wow. I guess it's a little easier to shave off the pounds later in the season when I'm doing more hard riding.

Garmin GPS Cyclocomputer

A little while ago I got a Garmin Edge 305 Cycling computer. It's a cycling computer, heart rate monitor, and GPS unit all in one. It's pretty fun to get a map and altitude reading of all my rides. It also has some other fun features like a virtual partner to race against, and programmable workouts and courses. I'm still playing with the various online software, but here are a couple links to a ride last weekend:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=39461&unitSystemPkValue;=2&episodePk.pkValue;=835999
http://www.trainingpeaks.com/map/shareworkout.asp?public_code=EQC6EGZRDUHR3Q80528200629

Bucket

Yesterday was a very tough day around the house. We had to say goodbye to Christine's long time best friend, companion, and pet, Bucket.

Ever since Christine rescued him from the Humane Society, he's led the best life a dog could ask for. Christine was as good a dog parent as there ever was. From lifesaving bloat surgery to joint replacement surgery, money was never an object when it came to getting the best care possible for Bucket.

He was such a loving and playful dog. There's so many things I'm going to miss: I loved the little "grumble" sounds he would make when he enjoyed the attention you were giving him. I loved the way he would get all excited about walks, and carry his own leash. I loved how he would sleep in our walk-in closet like it was his own little bedroom. Even up to his last day, he still loved to play catch with the tennis ball.

He had a good last day with lots of loving, peanut butter filled bones, and a steak dinner. He will be greatly missed.

Calculus Love

I snagged this from someone else's LiveJournal (who I don't even know). It's a bit of a stretch, but I thought some of my nerdier friends would get a kick out of it:


Even though there are many variables, we already know the answer is simple

---

It still pales in comparison to this equation: